Sins of a Solar Empire v1.03 preview

A sneak peek!

Sins of a Solar Empire is the highest rated new PC game of 2008 as well as the best selling new PC game of 2008 but we're not resting on our laurels.

Even now, version 1.03 of Sins of a Solar Empire is in internal beta. Stardock and Ironclad are working through the features and testing the new updates based on player feedback. Once that's done we'll get a demo version out and then move on to 1.04.

Here are some of the new features going into v1.03:

1) Significantly updated computer AI. The AI is substantially better than in the current game. We're also evaluating whether to put in a difficulty level that gives the AI added bonuses since, in any RTS, a top human player will always be able to out think a computer AI.

2) LOTS of new game setup options including:

+ Pirates or no pirates in a given game+ Fleet size+ Income rate speed+ Build Speed+ Ship speed+ Research Speed+ Culture Speed

3) The open market for buying and selling of resources has been altered so that there are random fluctuations in pricing and can crash or boom based on player behavior.

4) Imrpoved group phase jumping for large fleets of ships.

5) AI will surrender if situation is hopeless rather than drag the game out.

6) AI players will replace humans in multiplayer if a player drops.

7) Defeated players who are observing can no longer give resources or place bounties (bit of an exploit there).

8) Lots of tweaks to Ironclad Online for messaging users.

9) Improvements to network coding for multiplayer play.

This is by no means a complete list. There's dozens of small changes based on player feedback (we'll give a complete list when we release the update).

Our ETA for this release is late next week or the week after depending on testing. We want to make sure the AI updates work pretty well (and that means, ahem, lots of play testing!) and lots of network testing.

We also have a pretty large list of things to do for a future 1.04 so if your own personal wishlist isn't fulfilled here, there's always 1.04 to look forward to.

Happy about the improved AI. Got fingers crossed for defense improvements and an overhaul of diplomacy...don't see them mentioned here, hopefully they're included in "small changes" (although they don't seem like "small changes" to me...).

Happy about the improved AI. Got fingers crossed for defense improvements and an overhaul of diplomacy...don't see them mentioned here, hopefully they're included in "small changes" (although they don't seem like "small changes" to me...).

I wouldn't count on defensive structures buffing (anything considerable, anyway). The dev team has been pretty adamant about their purpose, and they're unlikely to change their stance.

As for diplomacy, that really is more of a game content change, so I would imagine 1.04 and up

Any news on fixing the crashes with NVIDIA cards? Currently the game is unplayable for many people who bought the game.

Nvidia claims to have fixed this internally. It's not a Sins-related issue, but a pretty widespread Nvidia issue, so it has to be fixed on their end. Here's hoping it works and they push the fix out soon.

some things that frogboy mentioned in another thread that are a bit more detailed (how they fixed phase jumping) or were not listed in this thread.

-Improved Group Phase Jumping for large groups of ships. If the number of ships exceeds a threshold, the group will only wait for 90% of the value of the ships to be ready. The stragglers will follow shortly after. Typically, its only a couple ships that cause the whole operation to stall so this should eliminate the majority of problems.

-AI will now take over for dropped players.-You no longer have to kill all a dropped player's planets to win even when the AI takes over for him.

-Overseer's Nanite Reactive Armor ability can now properly stack heals (but not the armor and max HP bonus).-Kostura Cannon now only disables enemy units and structures at the target planet as originally intended.-Autocast for many disabling abilities improved.-Disciple's Transfer Antimatter no longer targets other Disciples when autocasting.-Transfer Antimatter can no longer target entities with full antimatter.-Can't attack unbuilt structures anymore.-You can now change game options when loading save games.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------AI:----------------------------------------------------------------------------AI now knows how to surrender (based on time elapsed, relative economy, relative fleet value, resource reserves, and allied strength). Also, an AI player will not surrender if he has a human ally.-AI is now smarter about retreating and is willing to commit local suicide or accept local Phyrric victories if the global gain is higher and will also factor in local allied forces.-Fixed various AI researching and building stall outs for the various trees (military in particular).-Rewrote AI siege building and attack logic.-Improved AI use of Black Market.-Autocast for many disabling abilities improved.-Wide variety of AI upgrades.

Any news on fixing the crashes with NVIDIA cards? Currently the game is unplayable for many people who bought the game.

I'd say its some other thing or the specific card. I'm currently playing with an 8600GT Nvidia and have had no problems what so ever. I'm also running the 169 drivers but it could just be my card I guess.

Hope the diplomacy can be changed. This was brought up in a previous post (which i did not realize was the cause of the problems), is that one reason why diplomacy is soo hard to maintain is that the AI constantly sends out scouts and scout frigates. These will come to your empire to scout, but it is early in the game and your defenses and ships will destroy them, canceling out any diplomacy you have gained. Only realistic way of countering this is by getting your reputation up enough to get a cease fire.... A bit hard when defenses are destroying the scouts.

An easy solution would be that destroying scouts will have no negative impacts on diplomacy.

I love to see a less skittish AI, a game of tag is indeed a good way of describing it. Chasing a dozen Purge Vessels in circles is hardly a dignified occupation for my grand armada.When they say they've added options for "Ship Speed" do they mean build speed or movement speed? I assume build, but I'd honestly love to see some of the frigates slow down a wee bit (not a ton).

they mentioned build speed just above ship speed, so its most likely movement speed.

Sounds great, I especially hope that an overhaul of ICO is in the works, as, with all due respect, it's at best sub-par. Another minor thing I'd like to see something done about, is the mad rush there often is when it comes to buying crystal in the very beginning of the game.

Innociv was talking about the crystal rush too. I was thinking that "The open market for buying and selling of resources has been altered so that there are random fluctuations in pricing and can crash or boom based on player behavior." thing might help with that.

Our ETA for this release is late next week or the week after depending on testing. We want to make sure the AI updates work pretty well (and that means, ahem, lots of play testing!) and lots of network testing.

The text bug has been fixed and it really does make a remarkable difference! I didn't even realize it was happening until the fix went in, then it was wow.

ICO is getting some love with 1.03 but not an overhaul. It's more to improve the chat system (make it more IRC-like and to remove irritating bits) and some slight networking stuff. The 1.04 update will have more substantial improvements based on feedback.

Diplomacy is much nicer now. It's a lot easier to maintain and build relationships with AI players - and you don't lose all your progress just by blowing up a scout anymore (well, unless you didn't have much progress to start with).

The AI won't retreat all the time in 1.03 - it acts more intelligently in determining its chances. If it thinks it can do real damage to you or win, it'll stay in the fight - definitely an improvement over 1.02. More AI improvements are coming too.

As for the NVIDIA issues, we're working with NVIDIA to resolve them. Many of the issues we believe are fixed, but they won't appear until their next major driver update. It's been tricky to deal with this because none of us internally (or at NVIDIA) have been able to reproduce the issues people have reported. Luckily all the dxdiags, descriptions, and save games folks have sent in have helped a lot!